


Time

by susan-ivanovas (littleghost91)



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/M, Impending Death, Light Angst, Post-Canon, The grief of mourning someone whose death is inevitable, running out of time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27889030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleghost91/pseuds/susan-ivanovas
Summary: John and Delenn always imagined they would have more time. Set before the events of Sleeping in Light.
Relationships: Delenn/John Sheridan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Time

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this ship ask meme prompt: “What do they hide from each other?” 
> 
> On Tumblr at susan-ivanovas. Hope you enjoy.

David Sheridan has his father’s eyes and spirit. 

He’s a wriggly, energetic two-year-old. 

He’s a frustratingly confident and charismatic ten-year-old who has somehow managed to talk himself out of trouble for the third time this week. 

He’s fourteen years old and he’s all of the best and the worst parts of John and Delenn in equal measure, to the delight and dismay of both. 

He’s nineteen years old and he’s growing into his own place in the world as the young man he was meant to become. 

Sometimes, Delenn looks at him, and tinged amidst the warmth and pride any mother would have for her much-beloved child, she feels just so inexplicably  _ sad _ . 

Every birthday her bouncy baby, her incorrigible adolescent, and her courageous Ranger-in-training celebrates comes at a cost. 

Every year Delenn marks in the story of his life reminds her that the end of John’s story has inched another year closer. 

* * *

John sees his son grow up. 

He watches David turn two and ten and fourteen and nineteen and all of the years in between. 

He teaches his son to walk and to speak and to say curse words that aren’t  _ really  _ curse words so it’s okay. 

He’s there for the years where every small accomplishment feels like the birth of a galaxy, and sometimes, it’s enough to forget about all of the moments he’s going to miss. 

John has made his peace with the twenty-year extension of his life. 

Lorien’s gift to him is twenty years he wouldn’t have had otherwise had he met his end on Z’ha’dum. It could have been zero, with no Delenn and no David and a legacy of military accolades but none of the light and the love that showed him who he could be when it set his soul on fire. 

He’s not afraid of what comes next after all he’s been through and seen. 

But he sees the void grow in Delenn as the years go by, too. 

* * *

Delenn always expected she would outlive her husband.

What she didn’t expect was that it would come with this awful weight of  _ knowing _ . 

Of being able to see the encroaching storm from a distance. 

Of being entirely powerless to do anything about it. 

* * *

John and Delenn find an uneasy peace in the absence of words. 

They bury the darkness of their pasts and the emptiness of their future in the box where their long list of losses pile up. 

They prefer to think of existence in terms of duty. Of fate. Of serene acceptance that the universe moves by its own design regardless of their best-laid plans and intentions for it. 

They focus on the present. 

They revel in adventure and beauty together. 

They raise their son tall and strong and ready to leave his corner of the world better than he found it. 

Neither one takes for granted the second chance they were given, and neither regrets taking a chance on the great love of their life. 

Even if it was all meant to be temporary in the end. 

But they both, always, imagined they would have more time.


End file.
